Today's socialism is no different from the its pro-violence, antisemitic forbears ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Tuesday, August 19, 2025

Today's socialism is no different from the its pro-violence, antisemitic forbears

As Izabella Tabarovsky has shown in her indispensable essays, much of today’s ‘anti-Zionist’ discourse on the Left is not new at all but recycled Soviet propaganda.

I just saw published a 1982 letter from two Jewish Leninist-Marxists, both imprisoned as dissidents under King Hassan II in Morocco. Their letter to Yasir Arafat was intended to show that not all Jews are Zionist and to bind the Palestinian cause into a universal anti-imperialist struggle. It shows a bridge between the traditional Soviet antisemitism and today's "anti-Zionist" rhetoric.

There is nothing in this letter that today's celebrated members of the Democratic Socialists of America would disagree with. The only difference is the evolution of the language.

Marxism-Leninism → Intersectionality / Decolonization

Fascist-Zionist → Apartheid / Genocidal Settler-Colonialism

Proletarian armed struggle → Anticolonial resistance

The letter shows how we got from there to here.

From Abraham Serfaty and Sion Assidon
To Yasser Arafat

Dear brother, dear comrades, warm greetings to you.

At the very moment when the soldiers of Zionist barbarism occupy southern Lebanon, relying on the active support of Western imperialism and on the silence and complicity of Arab reactionary forces...

At the very moment when they are committing the crime of genocide against the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples, we, the undersigned, raise our cry of denunciation. We hope that it will reach you, even inside the lines of siege, to condemn the criminal operations carried out by Begin and his gang.

Once again, history records further proof of the true nature of Zionism: fascist Zionism – a machine for sowing death and destruction. Written now in the flesh and blood of tens of thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese – men and women, children and old people – martyred under the bombs.

Once again, history confirms to the entire world the reality of racist Zionism, which seeks to annihilate the Palestinian people entirely, just as Nazism attempted its own “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” through genocide. Thus, the masses of Jews lured into emigrating to Zionist Palestine have become the instruments of a new Nazism.

From Deir Yassin in 1948, to today in southern Lebanon, passing through Kafr Qasim and the occupied territories – and from Guernica in the Basque country, to Oradour-sur-Glane in France under Nazi occupation, to Santiago, Chile in 1973, and My Lai in Vietnam – it is the same logic, the same method, the same fascist-imperialist barbarism.

At the very moment when imperialism and Zionism are trying to extinguish the flame lit by the Palestinian revolution, we reaffirm through you our absolute support for the heroic Palestinian and Lebanese fighters – bearers of the hope of a brighter future for the Arab peoples, and the only hope for a real and just peace for humanity in this region of the world.

At the very moment when the noble aim of the Palestinian revolution seems to recede, like a shining jewel deep in the dark night of barbarism – that is precisely the moment when the clarity and grandeur of this aim shines forth most brilliantly.

Do not the most recent Zionist crimes prove that there can be no coexistence between Zionism and the Arab nation? The historical and civilizational struggle between the Arab nation – with Palestine at its heart – and the Zionist entity, which is nothing but an extension of imperialism in its aggression against the Arab peoples in general and a machine aimed specifically at eliminating the Palestinian people, will inevitably lead to the destruction of the Zionist entity. Then a new stage will open in the history of the Middle East – one of the cradles of human civilization since ancient times.

However long and hard the road, the coexistence of Muslims, Jews, and Christians inside a democratic Palestine – integrated in a unified Palestinian people – will be achieved on the ruins of the Zionist entity.

The Palestinian revolution carries a double hope: it will not only liberate the Arab nation from the Zionist monster, but it will also liberate the Jews of Palestine themselves from this suicidal, murderous illusion.

The Palestinian people has risen and cannot die!
And so – revolution until victory!

June 19, 1982

Source: al-Balagh al-Maghribi, July 29, 1982

Notice the parallels between this letter and current mainstream socialist political rhetoric in the West:

* Zionism is framed as equivalent to Nazism and fascism - not a political movement but a crime against humanity.

* Terrorism and violence - including Hamas' attack on October 7 - are framed as heroic revolutionary struggle.

* Israel is considered the obstacle to Arab-Jewish coexistence, and Arab antisemitism simply doesn't exist. Israel's violent destruction is a precondition for "peace."

* The antisemitic implication that "Zionist" Jews are linked as enemies to every progressive/ "anti-imperialist" cause, no matter how distant or tenuous the connection is.

* Anti-Zionist Jews are used as proof that the rabid hatred of the Jewish people, nation and religion are not antisemitic.

* "Palestine"/Gaza are considered universal progressive themes, tied to every other socialist initiative even though most Palestinians and terrorism are based on Islamist ideals, not progressive ideas.

* Arabs who are silent about Israel's fight against terror are considered traitors and cowardly accomplices.

Gaza was a catalyst to apply old Marxist antisemitic memes to today, dressed up as "wokeness" and faux concern over Palestinians as hundreds of thousands of other Arabs and Muslims are dying in sub-Saharan Africa to their silence. But I have never seen any of today's socialists condemn the extreme antisemitism of Stalin nor the support for violent terrorism of the left-wing Palestinians and Marxist Arabs like Serfaty and Assidon.

Until today’s socialists confront their movement’s Soviet inheritance- its antisemitism, its terror apologetics - how can their rhetoric on Israel be taken as anything but an echo of that poisoned past?

Serfaty died in 2010. Assidon today lies in a coma in Morocco. Their 1982 words supporting Arab atrocities against Jews and positioning today's Jews are being behind all the evils of the world, however, live on, almost verbatim, in the slogans of Western socialists.